Mature
by Vashagud
Summary: They were children. SephirothScarlet. Rated M for sexual content and some language.


The first time he could recall seeing her, she had been sitting across from him during a board meeting. He could hear her breathing rattling in his ears, and he could see her fingers trembling over her blueprints. He didn't like children, and that was what she was.

"You're sixteen. And going to war." That day she'd turned on him and said that. Turned on him with a brightness in her eyes that made her look a bit crazy, which wasn't a bad thing to be in their line of work. He didn't truly know his age, but he supposed he was around that age, and going to be a General in a matter of months. But he wasn't like her. He was ready to do the job. That was what it was, a job. And he was confident that his many years of vigorous training and conditioning as well as study had prepared him.

But somehow in the round of board meetings following the first sight, he found himself both intrigued and disgusted. Disgusted because she thought she could equate herself with him, and intrigued because she was growing, and had somehow managed to hold his interest.

Her first appearance had been marked by nervous energy and a definite naivete. She had been dismissed by the higherups almost immediately. He supposed the only reason they kept her around from then on was because she had a pretty mouth, and blonde hair that caught the white lights of the board room like gold.

He told himself that it was simply his observation, not an opinion.

But she handled it with poise and again sat across from him, giving the table a frown he knew was really for him. She saw the accusation in his eyes, the dismissal. He knew that was the reason she'd reminded him of his age. As if to suggest he was a child like her.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer." she pushed the six button and the doors closed. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "What? You can't look at me now?" He said nothing.

He could feel her nervous energy here too, the embarrassment of proving him right. There was also that determination, to show him and everyone that she was there for a reason, and _would_ be taken seriously. He'd seen it before. "Stop staring at me during the meetings." he looked at her then, watched the madness he'd glimpsed before start to reveal itself. She clicked away and he headed up to his floor.

"No, there are slots for the materia built into it..." she said, motioning to plans she'd gotten drawn. Someone laughed.

"We have guns. They're good enough." her jaw clenched, and her bracelets jingled.

"Good enough, isn't good enough." Quite a few eyebrows raised in the room. Sephiroth watched her smile, watched it falter when she met the President's less than professional gaze.

"So what would be good enough? Financial deficit?" Scarlet looked at the same man.

"It would be well worth it, we're talking about power here."

"We're talking about frivolous spending. When we have sufficient weapons why-"

"Because they are more powerful. This could mean easier progress, faster wartimes...it opens more opportunity for other territory." More ears perked up.

"It doesn't seem very practical though does it?" Sephiroth said, studying her diagram. He heard a few gasps and ignored them. He watched Scarlet turn to face him, bracelets jingling again, smile white and forced. Almost vicious. She lifted a page of the drawing, ready to refute his claim. Her hands were steady, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't seem to hear one breath.

"With all due respect-"

"Your design was amateur, and your idea faulty. Take it for what it is." The elevator's doors closed.

"You don't know what you're talking about." her energy was different, not entirely, but still different. She was growing, and even an idiot could see that. He could see it in the way she was learning what to say, what not to say, when to flatter, how to manipulate. She was learning how to survive and really nothing beyond that but she was growing. His own stagnance made him bitter, made him remember he would be a General in a matter of days.

But he was prepared.

"I assure you-"

"This is my area of expertise, not yours. _General._" She was fighting, and he wondered how long it took her to realize that that's exactly what she would constantly have to do just to survive in ShinRa. Even though, he hadn't done it himself. She got very close to him and he _hated_ when people did that, but he let her. He realized then how tall she was, and was a bit put off that she could nearly look him in the eye. And that she did. "I'm _good_ at my job." she said sharply, clicking out of the small space as the doors opened.

And suddenly, he got the sense that she believed he could never equate himself with _her._

A couple days before he was to be sent out, it really started to hit him. She saw it for what it was and laughed. _Laughed._ She had always had the capacity to be vicious. But he hadn't been able to fathom her truly embracing that. Now, she was. He pushed her like a boy would and she fell against the wall with wide eyes looking a lot like the girl she still was, but probably wouldn't be for much longer.

He doesn't remember apologizing, but he does remember her hand shaking on his chest, fooling with his collar. Yet again, he didn't stop her.

"You're worried." she said smiling into his face. He grabbed her wrists and almost threw her into the wall again.

"No." he said, jaw clenched. The next smile of her was very much of the Scarlet he'd see after the war. It was a bit startling, maddening.

"_Yes."_ her smile was sly and sultry. He knew that she had come to realize what an asset that was in the company. How much easier it was to get the attention of boardroom full of men if her skirt happened to be short, or her shirt happened to not be buttoned all the way. He saw her beginning to thrive instead of just survive, doing whatever she had to get the power she wanted. "I can make you feel better."

As she sank to her knees, he wondered what she was looking to gain from this. Her hands slid down his hips, and started at his belt. He watched her descend, but did not stop her this time either.

"Make it quick." he said, sounding more like the man who would come back from the war with blood on his hands, permanent ghosts and an understanding of death as well as the empty reason in his job. And sounding so unlike the boy about to command legions of men, a boy curious and wondrous of everything woman. She took him into her mouth, and looked up at him, hair looking rather dull in the darkened boardroom. He gripped her hair like a leash in his hands and made her take all of him, like he knew what he wanted, or even understood what he wanted. Like it wasn't his first time in such a situation.

Sometimes when he looks back on the incident, he surmises that he was probably her first little experiment in developing her 'tools' to get ahead. Thinking about it makes him laugh, and he also remembers that she wasn't horribly good at it. But what did an inexperienced sixteen or seventeen body know? Nothing but the pretty mouth stretched around him.

She frowned as she stood up licking her lips, looking like she couldn't quite decide about his taste. She rolled her eyes.

"General Sephiroth huh?" she straightened her hair. "I guess it has a bit of a ring." she clicked away, and he knew instantly that when he returned, because he would, they would be strangers to each other. And it would absolutely stay that way.

When he returns the conqueror of Wutai, he sees and understands more than he would have wanted to. Things about human nature, his own corruption and the things about war that don't come between pages. He comes back with acceptance of what he's done and what he's made for.

At times he even embraces it, other times he isn't sure he didn't just get fucked up, instead of actually growing.

But he knows that in ShinRa, there isn't much of a difference.

(an: honestly, i never really expected to start liking this pairing. it's nuts how that works. i didn't plan on having an ending like this, but then i thought it would be kind of comical and really, who needs an excuse to write smut? XD anyway, it was an experience writing it, and if you read, i hope you enjoyed.)


End file.
